The Aspect of “The Death of the Author” of Wanda Gołkowska’s Art

Wanda Gołkowska (1925–2013) was an outstanding artist associated with Wrocław’s artistic milieu whose abundant oeuvre underwent many transformations. This article focuses on one stage of her artistic and creative endeavors, for which the 1968 exhibition at Mona Lisa Gallery was a turning point. The objects presented in the series “Open Compositions” became a sort of canvas for my deliberations on the reasons of transformations of artists’ status in the face of social, political and cultural transformations in the reality of Polish People’s Republic, referring to the avant-garde discourse rooted in the notion of modernity present in the “post-thaw” times. These micro- and macroprocesses were confronted with the main concept of the essay “The Death of the Author” written by Roland Barthes in 1967.